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Henry King was born on May 11, 1842 in Salem, Ohio, United States, the son of Selah W. and Eliza (Aleshire) King. In childhood he went with his parents to Illinois. His father was a delegate to the Bloomington convention of 1856, at which Lincoln delivered his famous "lost speech. " Young Henry accompanied his father on that occasion and was permanently impressed by Lincoln's sincerity.
Henry learned the printer's trade in Illinois and later studied law.
For a time King edited and published a weekly newspaper in his home town, Laharpe. At the outbreak of the Civil War he went from town to town in Illinois exhorting the citizens to enlist in the Union cause, becoming known locally as "the boy orator. " He himself served four years in the Union army, attaining the rank of captain, a title which he always bore.
After the war he engaged in business but soon joined the staff of a Quincy, Illinois, newspaper, of which he became editor. In 1869 he went to Topeka, Kansas, where he edited in turn the Kansas State Record, the Weekly Commonwealth, and the Topeka Daily Capital. While with the Capital, he contributed historical and literary articles to the Century and other leading monthlies, writing, among other things, reminiscences of the Lincoln campaigns.
He was for a time editor of the Kansas Magazine, a periodical devoted to the literature of the West, particularly of the young state of Kansas. In 1883 he joined the staff of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat as editorial writer and became its editor in 1897. He declined an appointment as United States senator from Missouri offered him by the Republican governor of the state, declaring that a newspaper editor should not sacrifice his influence with the public or limit his independence by becoming an office holder.
He was much interested in education for journalism and delivered the first lecture in a series preparatory to the establishment of a school of journalism at the University of Missouri. He remained editor of the Globe-Democrat until three weeks before his death, which was due to chronic bronchitis.
Henry King made the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, daily print newspaper, a great conservative force in American journalism, attracting to it also some of the most brilliant Western writers. Among his important writings were: American Journalism (1871), an address delivered before the Editors' and Publishers' Association of Kansas, and "The Story of Kansas and Kansas Newspapers, " contributed to the History of Kansas Newspapers (1916), published by the Kansas State Historical Society.
King was the first president of the Missouri Republican Editorial Association, and the head of the World's Press Parliament at the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition.
Personally King was one of the most lovable of men and he was constantly on the alert to help younger folk. The door of his editorial room was literally open at all times to youthful, aspiring journalists.
King married Maria Louise Lane on November 17, 1861. They had two children.
